Carter, Mrs. Leslie

(1862-1937)

   Caroline Louise Dudley was born in Lexington, Kentucky, where her beauty, red hair, and tempestuous nature led to a stage career following a sensational divorce case in which she was found guilty of adultery. With an eye toward the box office, David Belasco starred Mrs. Leslie Carter, as she was billed, in The Ugly Duckling (1890). It flopped and critics complained of her overly emotive acting while also acknowledging her physical charms. The following year, Carter appeared successfully in Belasco and Charles Frohman's production of the operetta Miss Helyett (1891), but her real triumph came in 1895 as the intrepid heroine Maryland Calvert in Belasco's Civil War melodrama The Heart of Maryland. Carter scored additional successes as scandalous characters in Zaza (1899) and Du Barry (1901), in which the roles of a prostitute and courtesan, respectively, were well served by the sensational aspects of her personal life.

   Carter parted company with Belasco shortly after appearing as the tragic heroine of Adrea (1905), which critics considered her finest performance to date. She then toured in revivals of Camille and The Second Mrs. Tangueray, and had one additional major New York success as Lady Catherine in W. Somerset Maugham's The Circle (1921). She later toured as the duplicitous Mother Goddam in The Shanghai Gesture (1926). Carter made her final Broadway appearance in a revival of She Stoops to Conquer in 1928, after which she was reduced to bit roles in motion pictures, never recapturing the glamour of her earlier starring roles in silent film versions of Du Barry and The Heart of Maryland (both 1915).